Give us some room

GIVE US SOME ROOM

Open plan offices are bad for concentration. While most of us are able to get emails and discussions done in open plan environments, there should be no embarrassment in stepping away from our desks – or arriving later to them – to achieve deeper levels of thinking.

Argh, the annoyance of open plan spaces is that the dream we were sold was that they would be more open and collaborative. Both are incorrect. It’s really depressing because now we’ve build these spaces and need to put up with them. You only need to glance round most open plan offices and you can rows and rows of people wearing headphones, trying to get work done without interruption.

What can we do?

Well right now it seems unlikely that we’re going to return to the smaller offices of old, so the best thing that we can do is try to give people the opportunity to work in quiet spaces (or from home a couple of mornings a week).